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The development of Expressionism in Bulgarian art after the Second World War is represented by a small number of artists whose natural development in this direction has been hindered for more than 30 years by the ideological postulates of social realism. It was only after the second half of he seventies that they were able to turn more freely to those new tendencies which had been conceptually defined in the art of the West-European "new fauves".
The most prominent figure which stands out from this small group is undoubtedly Nikolai Maistorov. His leadership was predetermined not only by his remarkable professionalism but also by his inherent bias to expressionism in art, by his unique and subtle sensitivity. Nikolai Maistorov's emotional nature violently opposed to the absurdity of social life. But this artist did not feign to be a public exposer in his art, the graphic design of his works is devoid of any publicistic allusions as suggested by means of overcomplicated metaphors. Instead of this he populates his works with strange creatures - human and animals; embittered or despondent they present themselves to the spectator as invariable participants in a complicated, willfully staged mise-en-scence as the parts they play are always those of martyrs doomed to suffer somebody's original sin.
The author does not conceal the atavistic nature of his characters which have retained their in born eggressiveness and which entirely motivates their life activity. But never does he show their evil nature in action, freed from inhibitions whatsoever. This approach to the image makes it possible for us to judge. Maistorov's neoexpressionism as intellectually and spiritually elevated, alien to that demonstrative expression which turns drama and suffering into a purely external gesture.
During the past decades these characteristics of Maistorov's art underwent a marked development. It was no longer sufficient for him to realize evil as an existential category but he felt he had to go further into it and reveal it as a phenomenon with present-day references. That is why he turned more and more often in his art to literary works which enabled him to draw parallels to the problems he was interested in and to dwell on subjects which had already been suggested by thinkers and artists to other epochs. That resulted quite naturally in the author's revived interest in graphic art which transmits more certain intellectual ideas to the spectator's consciousness. Maistorov's first serious attempt in this field was his graphic interpretation of gospel texts in a series of black-and-white lithographs which were exhibited in an one-man-show. His next and even more successful step was a new series of lithographs to Charles Baudelaire's "Flowers of Evil" whose verses were profoundly interpreted not only on a graphic but also on an aesthetic and philosophical level.
In the large series of colour lithographs to Servantes's immortal "Don Quixote" Maistorov's artistic achievement goes far beyond the pure illustrativeness - the way it has always had. He is mostly interested in the existential problem - the motives which make a humanist and a man of dignity fight for the triumph of goodness in life and the terrifying results after the clash between noble intentions and the negative moral stereotypes which have been systematically flawing man's consciousness. The artist has not confined himself only to the morals of the romance itself but also added to them the mediation of such a brilliant contemporary moralist as Unamuno, the author of a memorable essay on Don Quixote.
It was largely thanks to Unamuno that the artist was able to see and perceive the antipodity of moral categories which clash so often in the romance. The situations which serve as settings for the numerous clashes are, however, not present in Maistorov's lithographs. Instead of this the artist resorts to juxtaposing these antipodes by applying a "portrait" principle - through a fragmentary and rough presentation of the characters he makes the spectator see their faces closely and feel their emotions clearly. And this, on its part, allows him to draw a clear-cut dividing line between the ones and the others. In these cases even Sancho Panza sometimes behaves as a not a quite well-shaped Don Quixote and not as his antipode... And the expressions fixed on the face of the Knight of the Rueful Countenance in the different lithographs present in an extremely rich amplitude all possible shades in the emotional and intellectual reactions of this hopeless humanist who is ready to sacrifice his life in the name of his ideal for a better mankind.
These graphic sheets are one of the new examples in contemporary art for a new, topical "reading" of Servantes's great romance...